Introduction

Rising marine water temperatures are causing unalterable changes to ecosystems globally. Especially along coasts, these increasing temperatures are negatively impacting “food provisioning, tourism, the economy and human health” (IPCC 2022: 451). Within marine ecosystems, fisheries– the areas designated for catching fish for commercial or recreational purposes– host a variety of competing interests. How fisheries are managed and monitored can have dramatic impacts on the state of marine ecosystems. As a part of marine ecosystems, fisheries are also affected by broader marine management frameworks. Given the global rise of fisheries collapses (e.g., Viet Thang 2018), it is evident that mainstream, conventional approaches to fisheries management have failed to conserve species, leading to negative impacts on the wider marine ecosystems (Garcia 1992; Lloret et al. 2018; Nogué-Algueró et al. 2023). Systemic change is argued for broadly among scientists and practitioners to prevent further degradation of marine ecosystems (IPCC 2022). Within the European Union (EU) adoption of an ecosystem approach is seen as the solution to restoring marine ecosystems among scholars, practitioners and policymakers alike (e.g., Berkes 2012; EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD); Gilek et al. 2018; Swedish Official Government Reports 2020; Tafon 2018).

In Sweden the implementation of an ecosystem approach has gained traction as a way to ensure the resiliency of marine ecosystems since the early 2000s, but as Österblom et al. (2017) find, failed to deliver transformational change or a ‘paradigm shift’. Their study, which investigated Swedish national marine policy and practices between 2002 and 2015, concluded that uncoordinated efforts and visions among national agencies responsible for marine policy and practices has inhibited change (ibid.). Since 2017, efforts by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM) to implement an ecosystem approach have increased (e.g., SwAM 2022). Given that this approach is largely uncontested yet difficult to implement, the central question I explore in this study is, how is this proposed ‘solution’ of taking an ecosystem approach for restoring the health of marine ecosystems presented in national policy pertaining to fisheries management? I seek to deconstruct this taken-for-granted concept of the ecosystem approach by analyzing who is presumed to benefit from this policy (i.e., ‘intended beneficiaries’), if and how a systems perspective is visualized in each policy document (i.e., ‘social-ecological interactions’), and for what purpose (i.e., for ‘sustainability’). Investigating if and how these documents differ in these categories offers insight on the feasibility of implementing an ecosystem approach within the fisheries sector in Sweden. Should policy related to fisheries management, and the national agencies responsible for this policy, lack a consistent understanding of what an ecosystem approach entails, there is a risk that this management tool becomes ‘watered-down,’ ambiguous, and inefficient. As such, this ‘solution’ is stripped of its potential for making fisheries management more sustainable (cf. Österblom et al. 2017).

Using the poststructural policy analysis approach by Bacchi and Goodwin (2016), I conduct a systematic analysis of the ambiguities and complexities in the meaning and implications of the ecosystem approach across Swedish national policies affecting fisheries– which includes the Strategy for Swedish fishing and aquaculture, Sweden’s marine spatial plans, and Sweden’s environmental goal, ‘A rich plant and animal life’. My goal is to contribute to understanding the constraints of putting the ecosystem approach into practice. Investigating barriers to implementation of an ecosystem approach from policy level is in line with calls for research on the political factors hindering transformations to sustainability in fisheries (cf. Fortnam 2019). Other research has used a poststructural approach to scrutinize fisheries and marine management (e.g., Mather et al. 2017; Tafon 2018), yet the ecosystem approach has yet to be investigated from this perspective.

The rest of the article is structured accordingly: Section 2 provides context for the ecosystem approach and how it applies to fisheries management. Section 3 outlines the poststructuralist policy analysis framework and the theoretical basis for locating power in policy. Section 4 develops the methodology, and Section 5 presents the results and analysis of the study. Finally, a discussion of the results and conclusion are given in Section 6 and Section 7 respectively.

The ecosystem approach and fisheries management

According to scholars, an ecosystem approach emphasizes ‘trans-sector’ collaboration, while the common single sector approach manages “human activities in isolation from one another” (DeLauer 2009: 251). This trans-sector collaboration happens when sectors have shared goals and objectives and are explicit about their sector’s impact on others as well as the “cumulative, intra and inter-sectoral impacts” (Larkin 1977: 252; cf. Österblom et al. 2017). Trans-sector collaboration does not imply that consensus is the basis for the success of this approach, rather that trade-offs across sectors must be made explicit in policymaking to prevent single sectors from maximizing their interests at the expense of others (Stafford 2019; cf. Van Hoof 2015).

Many scholars argue that overlooking the interconnectedness between management sectors, whereby fundamental links between the ‘ecological’ and the ‘socioeconomic’ are ignored, provides worsened ecological and social outcomes (Berkes 2021; DeLauer 2009; Long et al. 2015; Pikitch et al. 2004; Schultz et al. 2015). The argument that an ecosystem approach requires seeing the interactions between the social and the ecological as a system is well-founded within the scientific literature (e.g., Engler 2015; Layzer 2013). Hornborg (2017: 41) argues from a political ecology perspective that the analytical boundary between ’society’ and ‘nature’ need not be dissolved, but that “economic and political processes are necessarily and simultaneously also ecological”. Social-ecological interactions within an ecosystem approach can be characterized as a system with the reasoning that “economic and political structures are contingent on, transform, and are transformed by particular constellations of ecological circumstances” (Hornborg 2017: 41; cf. Holling and Meffe 1996).

Similar to the overarching ambition within sustainable development and sustainable use, an ecosystem approach calls for consideration of current resource needs while remaining future-oriented (Gilek et al. 2018; Long 2012). Furthermore, similarities are drawn between sustainable use/development and the ecosystem approach in their implementation challenges, where the debate comes down to how to ‘balance’ a diversity of uses, and how to make decisions about inevitable trade-offs when it comes to the social, ecological, and environmental pillars (Gilek et al. 2018; Layzer 2008; Van Hoof 2015). The challenge with applying an ecosystem approach is that there is a need to “safeguard human and animal health whilst enabling food security whilst supporting marine economies whilst conserving and enhancing biodiversity” (Judd and Lonsdale 2021: 2, emphasis original). Several authors provide a similar cautiousness for ecosystem-based management in terms of its emphasis on balancing interests and consensus for decision-making (Engler 2015; Layzer 2008). These studies suggest that in the worst case, management based on this approach could lead to worsened ecological outcomes than those under conventional management due to the difficulty in seeking consensus among participating stakeholders. According to Layzer (2008: 31), this form of problem-solving can resort to resolving the least complicated and contested issues while the “thorniest” issues persist.

Advocacy for using an ecosystem approach within natural resource management is not new. Already in 1973, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) called for an ecosystem approach to managing species conservation. Several other notable international conventions have called for an ecosystem approach to managing natural resources, such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 (UN, 1992), and the Malawi Principles, which outline 12 principles for an ecosystem approach to biodiversity, presented at the Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD Secretariat, 1998). The ecosystem approach is heralded throughout scientific communities and policymaking– from international conventions to EU Directives to national and regional strategies– as the proposed pathway toward sustainability in marine ecosystems due to its aspirations for “balancing various interests and policy objectives” (Gilek et al. 2018: 160; see also Layzer 2008; Long 2012). This need for taking an ecosystem approach is also mentioned across various EU policy related to the marine environment. For example, the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was adopted in 1983 and regulates the European fishing fleets within the EU through so-called Total Allowable Catches and a quota system (EU, 2013). Since its adoption, the CFP continues to be reviewed, scrutinized, and reformed (Long 2017). The ecosystem approach is presented as central in the 2014 revision. Contemporary use of the ecosystem approach in the EU is also seen in the formalization of marine spatial planning (MSP) through the adoption of the MSP Directive (Directive 2014/89/EU). The Directive mandates that all Member States create spatial plans based on an ecosystem approach for their marine ecosystems by March 2021. Long (2017: 64) contends that the EU’s adoption of ecosystem-based management is necessary, as it is based on a recognition “that effective fishery governance entails the management of a socio-ecological system, where there are clear linkages between people and the environment”.

The implementation of fisheries management based on a systems approach has been slow to gain hold in practice (e.g., Berkes 2021; Engler 2015; Gilek et al. 2018). Fisheries policy formulation and decisions regarding the continued use and/or preservation of marine ecosystems is currently based mainly on ecological and economic research, with disregard to social science research and the human dimensions (e.g., Alexander and Haward 2019; Arias Schreiber and Gillette 2021; Cohen et al. 2019; McAteer et al. 2022; St. Martin and Hall-Arber 2008). In practice, this is illustrated by the continued historical priority within fisheries management toward increasing profitability in the industry via large-scale fleets (Pascual-Fernández et al. 2019), which discounts the cultural and social values within small-scale fisheries that are seen as an added-value in many coastal areas (Johansson and Waldo 2021; Nightingale 2011; Pascual-Fernández et al. 2019). Managing from a systems approach may also be difficult in practice due to Western fisheries governance valuing and managing nature as a commodity to exploit (Berkes 2021; Berkes and Folke 1998), a reductionist and utilitarian view that turns people and the environment into governable objects (Johnsen 2014). This perspective is still present in fisheries management, where decisions are made primarily through measuring the Maximum Sustainable Yield to determine the maximum outtake of fish without damaging future yields (Maunder 2008; cf. Schultz et al. 2015). Maximum Sustainable Yield does not take an ecosystem approach, nor is it seen as sustainable, as it does not account for “ecosystem interactions and environmental variability” (Larkin 1977: 252; see also Stafford 2019).

Several studies highlight the need to assess how processes that are designed to manage from a systems perspective unfold in practice. Scholars that research the effects of marine spatial planning (MSP)– a process for determining the best use of marine areas– highlight the challenge of balancing diverse interests as called for in an ecosystem approach. Scholars generally acknowledge the potential for MSP to balance conservation with human-well-being, sustainable use and economic growth (cf. Crowder et al. 2006; Leslie and McLeod 2007). Yet researchers also point out that how individual countries decide to implement it can result in a gap between the international conceptualization of MSP and what is prioritized in each country (Kirkfeldt 2019; Merrie and Olsson 2014). As McAteer et al. (2022: 376) put it, the “rationales for the use of MSP are shaped by regionally specific needs”, and this tends to be driven by economic opportunities. Furthermore, local knowledge within fishing, particularly that of small-scale actors and communities, is sidelined by an “overuse and over-empowerment of technical knowledge in policy- and decision-making”, increasing inequalities among marine stakeholders (McAteer et al. 2022: 378). Tafon (2018) similarly argues that practices within MSP processes (including ecosystem-based management), are portrayed as a neutral and fair way of including stakeholders. The author contends that these processes under MSP are not only politicized, but their focus on ‘balancing’ and ‘integrating’ incompatible sustainable development objectives, could make certain stakeholders “ideologically complicitous in sustaining, rather than challenging, neoliberal logics of managerialism and economic maximization of marine resources” (Tafon 2018: 258).

In Sweden, an evaluation of ecosystem-based fisheries management by Arias Schreiber and Linke (2018) found that while the marine environmental status has been closely monitored and adapted to, the social and political dynamics affecting the marine environment have been neglected. As a result, management was not adaptable to social-ecological changes in the marine environment (ibid.). An additional challenge with managing from a systems perspective is that the Swedish MSP give the coastal municipalities determination over how the water is used in their jurisdictional zone, which is up to 1 nautical mile offshore. In the remaining 11 nautical miles of these “coastal waters”, planning responsibility is shared between the national government and municipalities (Westholm 2019). Consequentially, coastal municipalities determine the future use of the marine areas within their jurisdiction in their overview plans, which are then taken into consideration in the regional MSP. For Swedish MSP, “There is no hindrance from adopting an overview plan that is different from the regional ocean plans” (Swedish Agency for Water and Marine Management (SwAM 2012: 28, author’s translation). According to Westholm (2019), this fragmentation in management departs from the scientific understanding of an ecosystem approach and is rather a political construction.

Overall, the literature suggests that use of the ecosystem approach in fisheries management diverges from what is said in the scientific literature and policy. Even when principles for an ecosystem approach are provided in policy and strategy, its translation into practice is marked with incongruencies.

Locating and analyzing power within policy

There is a strong foundation of poststructural thought within fisheries and marine research (Mather et al. 2017; see also Tafon 2018). The main line of reasoning within poststructural research is that “social formations are necessarily indeterminant, precarious, and contingent achievements” (Howarth 2013: 61). In other words, the ‘social’ is constantly in the making (ibid.). This argument for contingency also transfers into this study’s selected theory about power, where power is seen as “constitutive” i.e., that it is re(produced) in webs or processes, also in a mutually constitutive sense between humans and nature. Such a theory of power enables one to highlight the politicalness of resource management and move away from deterministic ideas (Ahlborg and Nightingale 2018). This type of theoretical framing of power relations within policy processes can illuminate how dominant framings of ‘people’ and ‘nature’, and the binaries presented within the selected policy documents, may be sustaining, for example, a neoliberal status quo in terms of natural resource extraction. Analyzing these binaries helps deconstruct how national policies construct the ecosystem approach as the solution for fisheries management.

A poststructural policy analysis approach poses the question of what is left “unproblematized” in policy (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). It offers insights about identity construction and power relations reproduced within policy (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). This is done through framing policy as a “discourse in which both problems and solutions are created” rather than seeing them as mere responses to given conditions (Goodwin 1996: 67). A Foucauldian understanding of power, where power is “relational” and “productive”, in that power does not simply exist, but it is constructed out of practices and relations (Foucault 1990), underpins this approach. The material appropriate for investigation is anything that is “prescriptive”, forms of proposals that “guide conduct” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 18). Bacchi and Goodwin (2016) contend that analyzing categories, or what they term “subjects” and “objects”, unearths what goes into their “making”. They depart from the premise that no such categorizations of people (e.g., welfare recipient/taxpayer), or things (e.g., economy, nation-state, development) are fixed. This type of analysis is useful for analyzing an ecosystem approach in policy pertaining to fisheries management because it turns attention to unpacking dominant framings rather than assuming it will have the same iteration across policy. Turning now to the case of Swedish fisheries management, the next section describes the material and methods used for conducting my poststructural policy analysis.

Case and methods

This section starts with a brief overview of the governmental body/bodies responsible for fisheries management in Sweden, followed by a description of the three selected policy documents.

Swedish fisheries management

As an EU member state, Sweden is required to produce marine spatial plans. These spatial plans are based on existing international and national goals, laws, and regulations, such as the UN Agenda 2030 sustainable development goals, the EUs Green Deal, Blue Growth Strategy, Swedish Environmental Code, and Sweden’s environmental goals, which includes strategies for national environmental quality goals (Johannesson, 2022). The government has the overall responsibility for deciding on marine spatial plans following this more centralized development, which then creates guidelines for the various agencies to use when making decisions on requests for use of marine areas (SwAM 2015). There are many actors across different levels, who are involved in the process of marine spatial planning. At the national level, collaboration takes place between the central agencies and country administrative boards, and The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (abbv. SKR in Swedish). The outer marine areas, which are divided into three zones (Gulf of Bothnia, Baltic Sea, and the North Sea), are governed under the regional marine spatial plans (SwAM 2022: 26). Evaluations of the marine spatial plans are conducted by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM), which is responsible for ensuring that the plans follow both the MSP Directive, and the Swedish Environmental Code. Besides evaluating the environmental impacts of activities and regulations under these spatial plans, SwAM is further tasked with assessing the economic and social impacts of current and future planning and management. This includes evaluating how the national and municipal levels are working to connect the land and sea in their plans (SwAM 2022: 29). SwAM is expected to produce new suggestions for the marine spatial plans at least every eight years, based on these assessments (ibid.).

Additionally, as an EU member state, Sweden’s marine fisheries are regulated under the CFP, and therefore the conditions for national regulation of marine fisheries are based on international agreements under the CFP and other binding agreements. The CFP requires implementing an “ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management” (Article 2). The two government agencies responsible for creating the national strategy for fishing and aquaculture are the Swedish Board of Agriculture and SwAM. Within this national strategy, SwAM is responsible for environmental monitoring and other related questions, while the Board of Agriculture oversees issues of development and industry support.

Another governance arena responsible for policy affecting fisheries management, is found in the strategies for Sweden’s environmental quality goals. These goals are assessed yearly to provide mileposts for its national environmental work towards Agenda 2030. While the government’s Ministry for Climate and Industry has the overall responsibility for the national environmental goals, the Committee for Environmental Goalsetting (Miljömålsberedningen), is tasked with suggesting strategies for reaching these goals. Furthermore, eight different government agencies, each responsible for one or several of the quality goals, evaluate the progress towards the assigned quality goal (SEPA, n.d.). According to its first Swedish Government Official Report (2010: 101), the Committee for Environmental Goalsetting determined that the ecosystem approach would be the starting point for strategies under the national environmental goal system. At least every fourth year there is an in-depth evaluation of the progress towards reaching each of these 16 quality goals. What follows below is a short description of the three documents selected for analysis, namely: Sweden’s marine spatial plans, the strategy for fishing and aquaculture, and the environmental goal “A rich plant and animal life”.

Documents

Sweden’s marine spatial plans (MSP)

Within Sweden’s MSP, guidelines are presented for how to best “manage the ocean through trade-offs between different interests and to protect the ocean as a long-term resource” (SwAM 2015: 8, author’s translation). There is an overall strategy for the MSP as a whole, followed by sections detailing a strategy for each of the three regional zones mentioned above.

The strategy for Swedish fishing and aquaculture 2021–2026

The most recent version of this strategy for the period of 2021–2026 is the result of a project initiated in 2019, entitled Future Fishing and Aquaculture, which included collaboration across industries, interest organizations, authorities, and researchers (SwAM & Swedish Board of Agriculture, 2021). The stated aim of this collaboration was to, through dialogues with stakeholders in the fishing and aquaculture industries, create common goals by understanding each other’s “challenges, possibilities, roles and responsibilities” (SwAM & Swedish Board of Agriculture, 2021: 8, author’s translation). The results from this dialogue process are presented as the basis for the strategy, whereby the views and knowledge of various stakeholders are said to have contributed to large parts of its content and formulation.

Sweden’s environmental goal: a rich plant and animal life

The selected document for this study is the in-depth analysis report by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) produced in 2023, which assesses Sweden’s progress toward meeting the national environmental goal entitled “A rich plant and animal life” (SEPA 2022). The Swedish government decided upon eight specifications for this environmental goal, which include favorable conservation status and genetic variation, climate change effects, ecosystem services and resilience, green infrastructure, genetically modified organisms, foreign species and genotypes, biological cultural heritage, and nature in urban areas.

The above-mentioned policy documents were selected for analysis based on their use as guidance for policymaking in various sectors affecting fisheries management. While they do not share the commonality of being the same type of document (i.e., a national strategy, or a report), they all present guidance, or a “prescription” of how Sweden shall proceed to accomplish its goals within particular sectors. These documents do not have the same format, or mandate, making it a more difficult analytical task to compare them. However, their differences are also a strength for the aim of this study, since it illuminates how the government, via government agencies, is constructing policy solutions across sectors that should coordinate their ambitions and strategies if there is to be an ecosystem approach in practice. In this way, the documents do not need to be of the same ‘type’. More importance lies in being at the same (national) governance level.

Each document is part of the wider workings of fisheries management. A delimitation was made to select one document per sector, each of which has a different ministry or government agency/agencies responsible for its output. The scope was further delimited to a horizontal analysis of the national level, rather than a vertical, multi-level analysis that would include the regional and local levels. This is to further understand how Sweden, as an EU Member State, interprets a supranational mandate by the EU to take an ecosystem approach in various laws and regulations related to fisheries. Analyzing the horizontal dimension of policy provides insight into how the national-level governmental bodies are representing the ecosystem approach ‘solution’. Additionally, their reasoning could illuminate whether and how it is seen as instrumental to improving ecosystems, and the potential challenges for its implementation. Due to this focus on the horizontal level, I do not address interpretations of the ecosystem approach on regional and local levels, which may differ from these national representations.

Data analysis

Results are organized into three overarching categories of intended beneficiaries, social-ecological interactions, and sustainability. These categories were selected for cross-comparison between different policy documents following the poststructuralist logic of looking for what the ‘solution’ is represented to be in policy (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). This analysis begins by taking the ecosystem approach as the stated solution for sustainably managing fisheries, and teasing out the underlying assumptions in how it is represented in each document. This type of analysis does not attempt to answer whether or not said policy is reaching its goals. Rather, this analysis should “start from stated “solutions” to inquire into their implicit problematization(s)” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 21). Such problematizations are explored through analyzing the framing of intended beneficiaries (i.e., who is seen as the main beneficiary in each policy document? ). Another part of my analysis was to analyze how each policy document represents social-ecological interactions. Particular to this category was seeing if and how ecological boundaries were talked about in limits to growth, and whether the cumulative impacts across sectors were considered. Problematizing these assumptions about the intended beneficiaries and social-ecological interactions opens for an analysis of how sustainability, or sustainable growth/development/use depending on what is used in the document, are envisioned for Sweden, where each strategy has measures of how to maintain or grow the supply of resources in fisheries. The focus of investigation was on how these assumptions are funneled into policy that calls for managing from an ecosystem approach, and how this is proposed to be done.

Statements were identified in each document about balancing diverse uses (intended beneficiaries), whether or not limits to growth are recognized for managing from a complex systems perspective (social-ecological interactions), and how future supply and use of resources are proposed to be dealt with (sustainability). These categories were further narrowed down to their proposed measures related to fisheries, or interactions between fisheries and land (e.g., fish consumption, marketing, environmental effects). Agriculture and other land-based activities were excluded if they did not also include a discussion about a relationship to fisheries. Once this was done, the analysis involved comparing the documents to uncover if and how contrasts between these categories complicate the implementation of an ecosystem approach.

Results

This section analyses divergences or ‘contrasts’ between the documents. ‘Contrasts’ were determined wherever the policy documents had strategies or ideas within each of the above categories that contradict or counteract statements in one or more of the other documents. Results are organized below and summarized in a table by the analytical categories (i.e., intended beneficiaries, social-ecological interactions, and sustainability) across the three selected policy documents (see Table 1). A figure also depicts the spectrum of each document to the degree it promotes industry, nature, or people first (see Fig. 1). The possible implications of these contrasts are elaborated upon in the Discussion (Sect. 6).

Table 1 Analytical categories across policy documents
Full size table

Intended beneficiaries

Within the category of intended beneficiaries, there are contrasts between each of the documents when analyzing the assumptions behind who the main beneficiaries are of each policy when it comes to fisheries management (see Table 1). Within the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, there is a pronounced vision around increasing competitiveness and profitability in the sector. Rather than increasing the total volume of fish, the agencies propose increasing the chain of production and the value of products, by reducing administrative barriers, simplifying regulations, and promoting diversification, innovation, digitalization, and a more equal gender and age composition within the industry. Resource efficiency and waste reduction are seen as key to both increasing societal benefits and improving the health of the marine ecosystem. The overall vision in this strategy is that “Swedish fisheries and aquaculture are attractive, profitable, and sustainable operations that are run within ecosystem boundaries” (16).

Additionally, within the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, the importance of managing an ecosystem so that it can function “well”, is seen as vital to producing salient and “competitive” industries. In this way, fisheries are seen to revolve around human use, where measures should be taken that further benefit people through a market-driven model of increasing profitability through higher demand and improved marketing and logistics. The report contends that much of the ongoing research pertains to the status of fish populations and environmental aspects over a socioeconomic valuation of the industry. One example the agencies use in this strategy is that increased public knowledge about social and economic values produced by fisheries and aquaculture can have the result that local coastal fisheries become important tourist attractions, and thus contribute to “thriving harbors” with active fisheries (29). Thus, increasing public awareness about the industry’s importance to food provisioning and the cultural bearings of coastal fishers may add value to the industries by attracting spending in the form of tourism, investment in aquaculture, and perhaps changes in food consumption habits that favor domestic, sustainably produced products.

The environmental goal “A rich plant and animal life” also has a policy objective to continue the long-term delivery of ‘ecosystem services’, which is inherently anthropocentric. However, the focus is more-so on creating policy objectives that preserve biodiversity through building ‘green infrastructure’ to provide better connectivity between habitats, prevent fragmentation, and maintain ecosystem functions. Within this policy document, it is claimed that care for nature is of special importance for conservation. This is further specified as the “amount of care that we people show towards the ecosystem when we use land, water, and other natural resources” (39, author’s translation). In this way, the policy seems to suggest that nature needs to be the first and foremost beneficiary in policy, in order for people to benefit. This mention of care stands out in comparison to the other documents, where care for nature is not highlighted as important to conservation efforts, but rather the preservation of marine ecosystems is motivated by ecological boundaries and the desire for sustained human use over time. For example, the MSP calls for using environmental quality standards assessed and determined by SwAM, which is based on what humans and nature can tolerate in terms of impacts. Further assessments are to be integrated into MSP in terms of ‘socioeconomic’ and environmental impacts, but these are made within the framework for reaching and maintaining “good environmental status” set by such environmental quality standards. In this sense, care for nature does not factor into conservation efforts, but rather nature (or marine environments in the case of MSP) needs to be managed through monitoring and assessing human and environmental impacts. Furthermore, the dominant framing within the MSP for why preservation of marine life needs to happen is for human ‘use’. This is reflected in the emphasis on marine ‘ecosystem services’, which are defined in this document as, “the ecosystem’s direct and indirect contribution to humans’ wellbeing” (162). My assessment of the intended beneficiaries within the MSP, is that it depends on what is deemed most valuable to prioritize in a given marine area.

Social-ecological interactions

When it comes to social-ecological interactions and whether the documents take a systemic perspective, all three policy documents call for use of the ecosystem approach. For example, the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture and the MSP describe that, according to a government mandate, the authorities’ work with the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture and their respective action plans (i.e., implementation plans), shall be based on the ecosystem approach, while also contributing to fulfilling the goals in the government’s Maritime Strategy and Sweden’s Food Strategy. While the environmental goal, “A rich plant and animal life” also calls for an ecosystem approach, it is stated that the work toward management of ecosystems using an ecosystem approach has so far not been realized. Despite mention of an ecosystem approach in these documents, contrasts between them are found through an analysis of the social-ecological interactions. The main difference is to what extent each policy acknowledges ecological boundaries and limits to growth.

Within the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, it states that decisions about use and resource division of “ecosystem services” need to take both ecological and societal benefits into account (24). Additionally, the social-ecological interactions in the marine ecosystem are presented within the strategy as interdependent, where preserving the marine environment is in humans’ best interest. Fish and other aquatic organisms are described in this strategy as not only important parts of an ecosystem, but also the source for food, income, and recreation. In the strategy’s description, it is stated that it is in the collective interest that fish and aquaculture are sustainably managed within ecosystem boundaries (author’s emphasis). However, it reads that first and foremost, the social-ecological system should be managed in a way that optimizes human use of the marine environment, through the strategy’s emphasis on promoting “socioeconomic benefits”.

Additionally, within the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, there is a recognition that growth in the fishing industry is limited for several reasons. Some are due to ecological constraints, expressed as “the ecosystem’s low production capacity” (13, author’s translation), while low profitability, and an aging population within this profession are also listed as the main indicators of this decline in fishers. Within this strategy, the push for increasing production levels is acknowledged, yet this is qualified by saying increased production is dependent on fish population levels. In this regard, the emphasis on growth is based on a recognition of ecological boundaries. Another limitation to growth that is provided in this strategy is the fact that the EU strategy for biological diversity, instated in 2020, has the goal that 30% of European marine waters should be protected by 2030. The expansion of marine protected areas therefore implies less space for fishing opportunities. In this way, the food production industry is named as one of the most important industries to achieving the EU biodiversity goal.

This emphasis on socioeconomic benefits is also within the MSP, despite the ambition within this document to create synergies between different uses. Within the MSP it states that when synergies cannot be created, decisions will be made by weighing priorities, such as national interest, high cultural or natural value. This form of decision-making through trade-offs does seem to acknowledge a more systemic understanding of social-ecological interactions, where prioritizations need to be made rather than assuming all uses can lead to win-win scenarios. However, the MSP notes several instances where synergies of use can be found, such as between recreational and commercial fishers. This assumption of synergies implies that there are possibilities for sustainable growth in sectors if the marine resources are managed in such a way to enhance these ‘complimentary’ uses. The definition of ‘ecosystem services’ in the MSP is furthermore said to be used as a way of understanding humans’ dependency on nature.

An ecosystem approach to fisheries management is mentioned in the MSP as a strategy for preserving nature, sustainable use, and fair distribution of natural resources, with the goal of ensuring that use of the ecosystem occurs within its limits. However, when it comes down to regulating, the MSP informs that other policies or entities are given precedent for decision-making. For example, interests within commercial fishing and maritime transportation are regulated first and foremost under EU laws such as the Common Fisheries Policy, and the International Maritime Organization. Additionally, the MSP notes that municipalities are responsible for implementing comprehensive plans for use of its coastal waters.

In contrast to both the MSP and the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, in the environmental goal “A rich plant and animal life”, it is determined that development is driven mainly by short-term economic interests and increased global competitiveness, and that this is prioritized over “biological diversity and a holistic view of ecosystem services” (9, author’s translation). There is more of an emphasis on degrowth, where the policy states that production and consumption need to be reduced, and alternatives to GDP need to be considered for measuring welfare. However, it is further argued in this document that this reasoning is not seen to have reached the political arena or other agencies with responsibilities in the environmental goal system.

Sustainability

The social-ecological interactions presented in each document also feed into visions for current and future resource use and supply, or sustainability (see Table 1). Here assumptions can be found in terms of the recognition (or lack of it) of each sector’s impact on the other. It is important to note that sustainable food production in fishing and aquaculture has been identified as key to reaching sustainability goals within all three strategies. However, given that Sweden’s Food Strategy does not mention an ecosystem approach, nor is Sweden required by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy to take this approach, it was not included in analysis.

Analyzing the variability within the documents regarding their choice of terminology for ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainable growth’, and ‘sustainable use’ (see Table 1), helps unpack the nature-first, people-first, or industry-first tendencies that come up in each document as depicted in Fig. 1 below. The emphasis on ‘sustainable use’ within “A rich plant and animal life” implies a more human-centric relationship to nature, a terminology that can be traced to the Malawi Principles for an ecosystem approach. It is also a term central to mainstream social-ecological systems research (see Berkes and Folke 1998). However, the lack of mention of ‘sustainable development’ (seen in the other two documents) implies that there is a way to sustainably use the given resources, but that these resources should not serve the purpose of unbridled development. Within the environmental goal “A rich plant and animal life” it is argued that there is not enough “incentive for a transformation to sustainable use of resources” (43, author’s translation). Despite the amount of work going into increasing sustainable use, it is determined in the document that it is not enough to reach this goal by 2030. Therefore, a rather pessimistic view of sustainability is depicted in this policy document, compared to the other two. The MSP is the only document of the three that also uses the term, ‘sustainable growth’. Indeed, the overarching goal of the MSP is to “contribute to a good marine environment and sustainable growth” (22, author’s translation).

When it comes to contributing to sustainable futures, aquaculture is a sector that has received attention in the MSP, and unsurprisingly especially in the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture. However, there is variability between the documents regarding its future role within the fishing industry, and how it might contribute to sustainability and growth. Within the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, aquaculture is promoted as a promising and important pillar in the development of the fishing sector. This is proposed in light of the shrinking level of fishing opportunities in Swedish waters. It is further noted in this strategy, that local coastal fishers are struggling to maintain profitability, and are facing a lack of new recruits in addition to an aging population of fishers. While part of the solution is to increase the attractiveness of the workplace through profitability, stability, and heightened safety measures, aquaculture is presented as an attractive avenue for the development of this industry. It is also seen to be a way to produce more fish that goes to human consumption, with the rationale that “fish are one of the most effective animals for meat production” (11). Aquaculture is also presumed in this strategy to provide environmental benefits, such as via the production of algae and mussels, which remove nutrients from the water. It is acknowledged that Sweden has to-date identified few places suitable for aquaculture, and there has been limited, even negative growth in this industry over the last few years due to administrative hurdles and strict regulations. The strategy identifies synergies between fishing and aquaculture, despite their given conflicts of interest. For example, it is seen that aquaculture is important to the sport fishing industry and fishery conservation through the provision of “sättfisk”– fish that are farmed and placed in natural waters for sportfishing or to boost the population in areas where the population has been affected by the construction of hydropower.

The considerations given to fisheries versus aquaculture in the MSP document are interesting from the perspective of sustainability and growth, in that fisheries are given a greater amount of attention and priority than aquaculture. Commercial marine fishing is deemed to have an important contribution to food provisioning and job creation, provided the status of marine waters allows for these operations. In the MSP, there are certain marine areas where commercial fishing operations are prioritized, claiming that it is of “national interest”. In terms of aquaculture, there is not a national map of suitable areas identified for its operation. While it is acknowledged within the MSP that the planning process will include collaboration with and support to municipalities for identifying these locations on a more local level, there are no designated areas for aquaculture within the regional plans. While the negative effects for both fishing and aquaculture operations are mentioned, fishing is said to contribute to local identity and cultural values beyond food provisioning. This emphasis on fishing over aquaculture is most likely due to coastal zones being excluded from MSP, thereby limiting spatial planning for aquaculture. It does, however, present further obstacles for municipalities to make plans for building infrastructure or providing spaces for aquaculture, if this vision of increased aquaculture is to be realized.

Discussion

The ecosystem approach developed into one of the most central concepts in natural resource management globally (cf., Long 2012). Within the EU, the approach is considered the key for sustainable management of marine resources (e.g., Berkes 2012; EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD); Gilek et al. 2018; Swedish Official Government Reports 2020; Tafon 2018). Previous studies of the Swedish implementation of the ecosystem approach suggest that there is yet to be a ‘paradigm shift’, or transformational change toward sustainability in marine management (cf. Arias Schreiber and Linke 2018; Österblom et al. 2017). This study contributes to calls for more research on the political constraints of implementing an ecosystem approach (Fortnam 2019). I investigate whether the ecosystem approach is a ‘watered-down’ solution in Swedish policy pertaining to fisheries management, as in– widely accepted without a shared vision of what it entails and how it should be implemented. I scrutinize the assumptions surrounding the ecosystem approach in each of the selected policy documents. The analysis focuses on how the documents prescribe balancing ‘uses’, and to what extent there is a systemic understanding of social-ecological interactions. Finally, I looked at how these assumptions are expressed in each document’s goals for sustainability. Contrasts found between the documents suggest that fulfilling the holistic mandate of trans-sector collaboration under an ecosystem approach is improbable.

These diverging assumptions within the analyzed policy documents about who should be prioritized within policy can be expected to have different policy outcomes. Systematically analyzing these differences in policy offers insights about identity construction and power relations such policy is reproducing (cf. Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). The model below (see Fig. 1) highlights these contrasts in what each document assumes are the main beneficiaries of the policy goals for sustainability. This is to show who is prioritized, depicted below by the headings, ‘industry-first’, ‘people-first’, or ‘nature-first’. For example, in the environmental goal “A rich plant and animal life” it is emphasized that the ecological dimension of ‘sustainable use’ is the basis upon which economic and social sustainability rest. Additionally, that alternatives to growth based on GDP need to be identified. In this way, the parameters for economic and social sustainability are set by nature, as opposed to humans setting the parameters for nature’s limits. This is in line with the argument by Hornborg (2017), of the contingency of political and economic structures on ecological conditions.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Depicting the industry, people, or nature-first tendencies in each document

Full size image

In the case of Sweden’s Marine Spatial Plans (MSP), all three terms of ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainable growth’, and ‘sustainable use’ are used in the document. Through prioritization of ‘uses’ in the MSP, decisions are made that should reflect the best ‘interest’ of either people, nature, or industry, and in some cases present synergies between uses. One possible implication of whether these trade-offs within Sweden’s MSP, is that certain interests are prioritized over others, despite the intention of finding as many synergies of use as possible. The official guidance within MSP for determining the ‘best use’ of a marine area therefore should be treated with caution around how trade-offs are being made, and who is benefiting (cf. Engler 2015; McAteer et al. 2022; Tafon 2018). For example, the opaqueness around determining a marine area as important to ‘national interest’, and therefore only to be used for those activities which serve this national interest, assumes a widespread consensus with little room for debate. The risk is that these categorizations of space go unquestioned. This could maintain the status quo rather than open up for more radical change, and management adaptable to changing circumstances.

An analysis of the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture provides evidence of the understanding that the market has the potential to work in favor of people and the environment. Analysis of this document suggests that, since the public is seen as consumers who steer the market, government should therefore provide financial and administrative support to the fishing industry to strengthen the market. This emphasis on the market implies that what is good for the economy is good for the environment is good for people. In contrast, within the document “A rich plant and animal life”, care for nature is deemed central to conservation, albeit alongside ‘sustainable use’. Yet specifically introducing the concept of care in the policy document implies a recognition of social ecological interactions that go beyond seeing nature in terms of use and limits. It is important to bear in mind that this document does not explicitly correlate care with nature having an intrinsic value. However, analysis of this document does overall point to a regard for a common responsibility toward protecting the ecosystems that sustain human and non-human lifeforms. When compared to the other documents, this seems to imply more of a nature-first tendency.

While all of the documents state the need for an ecosystem approach, an analysis of the underlying assumptions within each policy document shows that there is not a uniform understanding across the documents about what this entails in practice. This is especially evident when it comes to the low recognition of the cumulative impacts of the fisheries sector on people and the environment. Although Sweden’s Food Strategy was not included in this analysis, the food industry sector plays a critical role in whether implementation of an ecosystem approach is possible in fisheries management. Sustainable management of fisheries from an ecosystem approach means there needs to be an understanding across sectors that accounts for the cumulative impacts of the entire chain of production to consumption (cf. Larkin 1977; Stafford 2019). While the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture states that the food industry sector is vital to reaching the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, my analysis of this document suggests that there is an overall lack of trans-sector collaboration for assessing the cumulative effects of proposed growth in the fisheries sector. There is a strong possibility that the industry-first reasoning in the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture will maintain the status-quo of natural resource extraction at levels that continue to degrade ecosystems, and thereby also lead to worsened socioeconomic conditions for people (cf. Berkes 2021).

Another factor within Swedish policy that may jeopardize implementation of the ecosystem approach, is that the coastal municipalities via their respective Country Administrative Board, have the responsibility for implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management. This management set-up puts the onus upon these Boards to manage fisheries out of this holistic perspective with adjoining municipalities, which could lead to challenges in implementing an ecosystem approach. One the one hand, the autonomy provided coastal municipalities might enable decision-making more in line with local conditions and desires (cf. Tafon 2018). However, there is also the risk that this management fragmentation leads to worsened social and ecological outcomes. For example, if the municipal overview plans do not take a more holistic approach accounting for the cumulative effects of each municipality deciding for itself what the best uses and infrastructure plans are (cf. Westholm 2019; see also Stafford 2019). It remains to be seen what the implications of this management set up will be. There is a small chance that the resources and knowledge basis are enough for coastal municipalities to act independently from the regional MSP. A more likely scenario is that more collaboration and support from authorities responsible for the regional MSP will be needed for municipalities to implement this holistic perspective under an ecosystem approach.

Conclusion

In this study I demonstrate the value of problematizing the ecosystem approach through a poststructuralist lens. My analysis of three Swedish national policy documents unveils contradictory interests and objectives across sectors affecting fisheries management. These discrepancies can be seen as significant against the scholarly work, which argues that effective implementation of the ecosystem approach will require a consistent interpretation of what the approach entails (cf. Fortnam 2019; Österblom et al. 2017). My findings imply that the ecosystem approach is a ‘watered-down’ solution when it comes to sustainably managing fisheries. While the need to take an ecosystem approach is shared between all the documents, there is a risk that differences in how industry, people, or nature are prioritized, lead to weakened or fractured implementation. The results suggest that there is little strategizing across sectors for dealing with the cumulative impacts of fisheries on the ecosystems that sustain them. Although Sweden’s marine spatial plans attempt to systematically balance interests, decisions about current and future ‘use’ can also be jeopardized by more short-term, industry-first thinking in other sectors. One of my findings that depicts this clearly is in the industry-first prioritization in the Strategy for Fishing and Aquaculture, which risks not reaching the national environmental goals. A likely implication of this lack of recognition of intersectoral impacts, is that it hinders a holistic view of the ecosystem and overlooks important social and ecological interactions (cf., Layzer 2008; Long 2012; Österblom et al. 2017). There would therefore be a definite need for this policy document to account for how fisheries are going to be managed where stricter limits to industrial growth are reflected in the goals for sustainability.

Strategies to enhance sustainable fisheries management from an ecosystem approach should also critically consider the cross-sectoral impacts of food provisioning. The results of my study suggest a lack of policy coordination for accounting for important land-sea interactions that occur within fisheries. When it comes to fish for human consumption, a reasonable place to coordinate efforts that account for cumulative impacts would be in fish landings (i.e., when catches are brought ashore). There are a number of economic, environmental, and social consequences to consider in how fish are marketed, sold, and consumed that remain in a siloed approach of land-based and marine-based operations and regulations. It should be kept in mind that Sweden is not alone in maintaining a siloed approach to fisheries management. Scholars contend that there are few to none known examples of cross-sectoral operationalization of the ecosystem approach to managing marine ecosystems (e.g., Cormier et al. 2017). According to these authors, much of the fate of operationalizing policy objectives within the ecosystem approach lies in how authorities are set up to implement these objectives.

The findings in my study reveal a lack of systemic planning across sectors that can account for the cumulative impacts of the fishing sector on people and the environment. Important further research lies in analyzing the feasibility of implementing the ecosystem approach in Sweden based on how national policy aligns with existing management structures for operationalizing its goals. Sweden is an interesting case to further investigate implementation of the ecosystem approach, seeing as coastal municipalities are excluded from the marine spatial plans. Studying the implications of this autonomy would provide important research on the possibilities and challenges, and the effects of this delegation of fisheries management to the regional level. Further important future research could include studies in other countries for revealing to what extent the challenges of implementing an ecosystem approach are context specific.